best birthday present ever.

(awesome photo of Ray , courtesy of Jim McCoy, a Flickr contact who has kindly allowed me to use it here. )

Tuesday night was magical. Just perfect.

It was one of those times where you just know you 're in the midst of watching something great. And when you're surrounded by people who you know share that same feeling, it gives you an incredible high that you don't want to come down from. At the end of the show, I was ready to become a Ray groupie and just hop onto a bus to follow the rest of his tour.

The place was packed to the rafters, it was a sold out show, and there wasn't much room to move. We arrived early, and were seated at a ridiculously tiny bar table with 6 chairs around it, at the VERY BACK of the room. The usher assured us those were our places. WHAT?! No way. I was, um, just a TAD upset, as I'd assumed my seats would be in front of the stage, or at the very least, a few rows back. I bought them not even 30 seconds after the tickets went on sale. But we were at table 412, and my tickets said 412, so who was I to argue, right? Then about 30 minutes and 2 drinks later, just before the show started, something wonderful happened. A group of 6 people showed up at our table and said, 'hey, you're in our seats'. Honestly, at that point, I was completely annoyed and fed up by all the seat changings going on around us. So I grabbed another usher, this time a young girl with dreds, who asked to see my tickets, told me that we were indeed in the wrong seats thanks to the dude who seated us there in the first place ( dumbass) and that our table was WAY down in the front- 412, PARTERRE, 4 rows back from the stage.

Happy Birthday to me! :)

The words were barely out of her mouth, and I was pretty much running down the aisle like I'd won the lottery. When the show started, I had a perfect view of Ray, who was in my direct line of vision. Sometimes things just work out for the best, don't they? I didn't bring the camera, and was kicking myself every so often thinking of the photo ops I was missing. So I just kicked back and enjoyed the moment instead of being distracted with ISO and shutter speeds, and it was all good.

The show was WOW from start to finish. He played with passion, and sang with that incredible raspy voice of his, and it completely brought me to tears more than a few times. There's definitely no studio enhancement, and what you hear on his albums is what you hear live. Just beautiful. You could tell he's an intensely shy type, who probably has a love/hate relationship with performing. He didn't speak at all for the first 20 minutes of the show, and when he finally did ( after a few jerks heckled him to talk) his voice was soft and shy and quiet. He said he loved the vibe of Montreal, and that his ancestors came from here, and you believed that he wasn't just talking BS to please the crowd. He talked about living in Maine, not far from here, and how much he loved it, even though there was nothing much going on there. And since I'm a Maniac at heart, this just gave me another reason to love him. :) The song set was amazing, all 3 albums were covered beautifully. When he sang 'A Falling Through', I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven.

My final thrill of the night was the stamp of approval from dh, (who had absolutely NO expectations for this show whatsoever and wasn't a fan- I was anxious to prove him wrong) who looked at me when we were walking out, and just said, 'Wow. He's good'. He's a man of few words too, so with that, I knew he was a convert.

A great birthday indeed. :)